


Green is the room

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Series: Englishmen (and an Irishman) Abroad: Five Men in the Same Boat. To Say Nothing of the Dog.... [6]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1710110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another conversation regarding the elephant in the green-room. Niall, Harry, and Liam understand more than Louis - or Zayn - expected they might grasp.</p><p>(Again, this is merely a fantasia on recent events, with no knowledge of the facts and a dollop of long-distance psychology. It almost certainly bears no relation to any reality whatever.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green is the room

Harry, Liam, and Niall had wasted no time in wrapping their erring brethren – and, bar Niall, more than brethren – in a group hug. (It had taken Liam years to become altogether comfortable with that: it was terribly un-British, and he was a proudly working-class lad from the Midlands, not raised to be a luvvie … and, he admitted only to himself, there was still a part of him, that bullied and derided child who had never grown up, which was always tensed, afraid that he’d be caught out and mocked and called a poof for it.)

‘The tabs,’ said Louis, with shaky bravado, defiant to the last, ‘say you’re furious with us.’

That Harry’s ‘Yah, right, do I _look_ it’, was mumbled into the side of the Tommo’s neck, was more than enough answer to that.

On the other hand, this was followed by his, ‘We _are_ going to talk about this, though, yah? All of us’, which Louis especially did not find wholly reassuring.

Least of all when Liam – Niall was staying resolutely out of the crossfire, with his usual wisdom, and, after all, _he_ wasn’t involved with Louis or Zayn – said, firmly, ‘We are. But we love you: know that first.’

And talk about it they did: first in the green-room after the show, as they waited for security – a term they now found bitterly ironic (Niall had had a few words about the soullessness of certain gingers) – and then, after, in hotel and tour bus.

Harry’s voice was even slower than usual, golden syrup and singlemalt dripping into a tub of bran. ‘Next time you’re _recorded_ talking about “green” and, um, “black”, love, it’d best be organic chocs, yah?’

‘You knew,’ said Louis, preparing for a positive aria of argument, ‘what was up and in play –’

‘Yah. What none of us knew – you included – was that it’d drop on the day Maya Angelou died and there was a new study out on racism in Britain.’

‘Fucking UKIP –’

‘Louis.’

‘You’re not,’ added Liam, ‘going to change the subject, so you may as well not try.’

‘Don’t you be so certain, Liam mine,’ said Niall, levelly; ‘he’s managed to change t’e topic from my charity and t’ overshaddy yours, he has, but.’

Louis winced.

‘Ah, now, we love y’ all t’e same. But why wad y’ not _t’ink,_ for once?’

‘It’s the … it’s the charge of racism sticks in your craw,’ said Zayn.

‘Well, obviously.’ Liam certainly thought that too obvious to want saying.

‘ _You_ lot don’t get to take moral high ground,’ said Zayn. ‘It’s sharn. _I’m_ the only person of colour in band. And did you see me cut up rough? Did you?’

Harry was uncompromising. ‘You can’t _licence_ him. Least of all on this: it wasn’t as if he said, sorry to say the words, “Paki” or “wog”.’

There were several sharp intakes of breath, and a deathly silence.

‘Don’t defend the indefensible. And I am _not_ having the man I love resort to saying, “But some of my best friends are” and all that.’

‘Any more,’ said Liam, staunchly, ‘than I’m overlooking the use of “girly” as a term of – what’s the word I want?’

‘T’ey know what you’re meanin’.’

‘Reckon they do. Reckon they do at that. No better than calling things “gay” or slagging something off as something “poofs” ’d like or summat.’

‘ _Shit,_ ’ said Louis, squirming in his seat.

‘We’re all damaged,’ said Harry. ‘Bigotry and broken families and divorces and daddy issues –’

‘Jaysus  _feck,_ ’ complained Niall, only half-jokingly: ‘y’ see what it is ye’ve done now, he’s r’ading up all t’is on t’e Internet now.’

‘And maybe we want to heal ourselves _before_ we start a war with management,’ added Harry.

‘Happen we do,’ said Louis, in no small indignation, ‘but if we wait on that, we never _will_ get shed of the fuckers –’

‘It’s you I’m worried for.’

‘Oh, you do talk a deal of shit, Haz, I’m a big boy –’

‘You were never, ever going to smoke a fag – remember? Or get a tat. Or drink, _ever._ And “Larry” is “a load of shite” if I recall.’

‘Haz –’

‘If I’m responsible for the tats.... Boo.... I worry, yah?’

‘He worries,’ cut in Liam, ‘because – right; listen. You were always camp –’

Louis bridled. ‘So’s Michael McIntyre. So’s – look at Jack Whitehall!’

Harry suppressed his grin at this reference to his mate. _Everyone_ looked at Jack when they might.

‘Did you see him on _QI?_ He was campier than Stephen Fry! I –’

Liam, patiently implacable, wasn’t wearing this.

‘You were always camp, and you worried more about it than management done at first. You did do, Tommo, and we all know it. You weren’t secure about your place, or your voice – which were balls, anyroadup, but you weren’t – and you were frit that, any excuse and you’d be dropped. ’D’ve had to’ve dropped all of us, they’d dropped you, and that hasn’t changed, we’m just as much all in this together as we always have been.

‘You went out and got ink ’cos you hoped it’d make you look well-’ard, and hide the camp. You _did_. No denying of it. And smoking the faiks were part and passel of the same. And you were afraid to drink and get drunk, let alone get high, ’cos you were afraid you’d out yoursen.’

Louis hung his head.

‘You think I don’t get it? You really think _I_ don’t get it? I _know_ – the hard way. Bad enough when you dassen’t get bladdered for fear you’ll out yoursen; but when you must get bladdered to face pretendin’ to be straight and all, and to be one of the lads.... End up standing atop tall buildings anunst nobbut air, in a blackout from being kaylied, you does.’

Louis looked at him, wide-eyed with horror. ‘Payno....’

‘So if Haz cried foggy on werriting about you, I’m crying secky.’

Harry was not about to let the iron cool. He struck. ‘Yah, and I _do_ worry, and I’ve the right to: because I love you. All of you, one way or another, yah, but _you,_ Lou … you know how much. Bad enough when you daren’t drink or drug for fear of falling out of your closet, love. When you have to be drunk or high to contemplate rebelling, or pushing against the closet door, yah? That’s when we worry. When _I_ worry, for _you._ We’re none of us throwing rocks – we all live in glass houses on this, the drink – “the gargle”, yah, Nialler? – and the rest. And we know, and you told us, what you meant to do and what your aim was, and we’re all in. But – maybe, love, this wasn’t the best way to go about it after all?’

Niall kept shtum. He’d seen that from the off; but he also knew and had always known that Louis – whatever Liam thought – was, at the end of the day, the leader, _insisted_ on that, and, just as much as Liam, had a deep psychological _need_ to be the leader and to feel himself to be in control. There’d been no point in trying to dissuade him, the dear knew, when Lou’d had his latest Bright Idea: the only teacher Lou ever learnt from was experience, and it was only _after_ disasters that he could be brought to review the flaws in his planning.

Liam simply pulled Zayn down into his lap, encircling him in his arms. He knew what considerations had prompted his Zayn to go along with this tactic. ‘And of all the ways of kicking over the traces and getting shed of the teen act, _and of getting out of an arranged marriage,_ this were likely the wussest.’

Zayn hid his face in Liam’s soft, plaid shirt, as close to that strong chest and stronger heart as he could manage to be.

‘So, t’en,’ said Niall, judiciously – indeed, judicially. ‘We start over. We try somet’ing diff’rent, and subtler, but. T’e goal hasn’t changed; but we’ll agree a new means, a new _ap-_ proach, aye? And plan it out all t’get’er t’is time, and not one of us has a bright idea and we all go along.’

Louis nodded, penitently.

‘Because,’ said Niall – the judge summing up to the jury – ‘y’ may be a feckin’ shower, but it’s _my_ feckin’ shower y’ are, and we all love y’ bot’, and back ’round t’ ot’er way. All right? All right. T’at’s done and dusted, t’en. Chrisht, and is t’ere no nosh? It’s starvin’ I am after all t’is.’

Liam felt the tremors of Zayn’s suppressed laughter; and joined openly in it when Harry, true to form, said, brightly, ‘I have a fruit plate! Um. Somewhere. I think it may be under my knitting....’

‘Fluff,’ muttered Louis, aggrieved. ‘Wool on the fucking bananas – Haz, I swear....’


End file.
